Notes on the Voynich Manuscript - Part 1 [1991 December 16] ---------------------------------------- This is my first attempt to contribute to the Voynich mail group, so please be patient if I repeat old stuff. To date, my information comes only from (a) an initial reference in Colin Wilson's silly book 'The Philosophers Stone' (b) a brief discussion in 'Labyrinths of Reason', already cited (c) Brumbaugh's collection of articles 'The Most Mysterious Manuscript' (d) this group (e) the partial ASCII transcription available to us. Not much to go on. In particular, this means I've actually seen only 12 pages of the document in photocopy, and that unfortunately often reduced, badly copied, and monochrome. First Impressions ----------------- What seems obvious from all this? First, the document seems to be a compendium of herbal, astrological, and maybe medical data, if one judges by the illustrations. It seems to me that the illustrations were written before the text, and the text often labels figures, so is probably about them. Secondly, the writing is a clear, cursive script that flows from left to right and top to bottom, as is evident from the margins. The text I have seen is divided into short paragraphs, each introduced by a larger and slightly more ornate letter - a common mediaeval style. On two of the photocopies, the reproduction is good enough to show the density of the ink, and this, plus the cursive appearance, shows that the text was probably written with reasonable speed - the speed of a fair copy, not that of notes, nor that of a laboriously transcribed cypher text. (See, for instance, fol 85r on p 54 of Brumbaugh.) Incidentally, it is asserted, and my small sample confirms, that there are no corrections in the document. The document is European. This is suggested by its provenance, and confirmed by several features of style. The chubby ladies in its margins are Caucasian; the zodiac it uses is Western; the stars and constellations identified are those of the Northern Hemisphere; the plants are European except for two disputed ones. [Note: I was wrong about this last; most of the plants remain unidentified and some may well be imaginary.] Key Issue --------- As I see it, the key issue in attempting to understand this document is to classify it. The limited background material I've read suggests three possibilities G: gibberish - the thing is a forgery without meaning C: cypher text - the thing is an intricate cypher P: plain text - the thing is a real book intended to be read There is also the possibility of G+C: the document is mostly null padding with a small amount of enciphered information, perhaps one letter per word or one word in ten. After a little computer analysis, which I'll report on later, I've decided it is very unlikely to be cypher text, and that any deliberate concealment is largely incidental to its real purpose. What I'd like to put forward here is some reasons why it might be plain text. Why Can't we Read it? --------------------- If the Voynich manuscript is plain text, why can't we read it? One obvious answer is: for the same reason we couldn't read the Pyramid Texts or the Dresden Codex - because the language, or script, or both, had by historical accident passed out of use. After all, only three Mayan codices survived, so maybe a library of Voynich stuff was burned before the fall of Mont Sejur. In other words, the book was written to be read, in a script and language well known to its original reader community, whoever they were, and by purest accident no other such book has survived. I am not convinced of this, by any means, but at least think we shouldn't dismiss the possibility. Now, it is also possible the script and language were deliberately invented, but even so the prime motive need not have been concealment. Consider the script. It has clearly been devised with some care for its legibility and ease of use, the manner in which the symbols join together confirms that. The motive could have been to create a cursive "shorthand"; more plausibly, it may simply have been to create a script easier to read than Latin minuscule, which the Voynich script certainly is. And that's historically plausible too, for the italic cursive hand was devised for just that reason. Even a synthetic language need not have been for secrecy. After all, nobody would entertain for thirty seconds the idea that Esperanto was devised to be the secret speech of an International Cathar Conspiracy, and it troubles me that we accept such ideas about the Voynich manuscript so uncritically. What is its subject matter? Plants, stars, chemicals and the like. It is entirely reasonable that somebody should want to devise an international synthetic language to discuss such things - after all, in this twentieth century, we do discuss these subjects in an international terminology that uses what are to all practical purposes synthetic languages, such as the Geneva names for organic compounds, or the Linnaean taxonomy for living organisms. Something like "4oxlpcc89 4olpc89" could merely be an earlier philosopher's attempt at "Echinus europaeus" or "C6H5CH2COOH". Now, given the temper of the times, it is probable that the secrecy of a specialist script or language was a welcome side effect, and that it was used to mystify the uninitiated. However, I find it also plausible that this was a *side* effect, and that the main purpose of the Voynich document was to communicate to those who could read it. The probable existence of two scribes - indeed, I believe of two scribes and at least one other author - lends support to this. Finally, look at the document. I could not write English cursive this well, this consistently. And I certainly couldn't copy a text this long without error, unless I clearly understood its meaning. So, maybe the thing is a forgery, and there are no corrections because there is no meaning to correct. But even to generate this forgery, somebody had to spend an immense amount of time practicing a nonsense script, to become this fluent. And I find that very hard to believe; there are far easier ways to con a mark out of a couple of hundred ducats. Gold Bugs are Red Herrings -------------------------- Finally, one trivial point. With regard to the systematic analysis of the text, a document written in an unknown alphabet is indistinguishable from one written using a simple substitution cypher, and I simply lump both possibilities together as my hypothesis P. For example, if Capt Kidd's note had been written using the Hebrew alphabet, it could have been broken by the exact same techniques as Poe actually describes in the story. It is irrelevant how the script was devised or to how many people it was known; what matters is that we don't know it and must somehow reconstruct its rules. As to what those rules are - what are the morphemes and phonemes of the script - that's a hard question. Robert Firth